CHLPI’s OCR Complaints Featured on Marketplace

Listen to the September 6^th story from Marketplace reporter Dan Gorenstein on the filing of administrative complaints to the federal Office for Civil Rights from the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation and partners in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. The complaints detail insurer practices that prevent vulnerable patients with HIV from receiving needed care and treatment. The discriminatory practices insurers are engaged in include refusing to cover key medications and requiring high cost sharing for all medications used to address certain health conditions.

CHLPI’s Faculty Director Robert Greenwald says:

“CHLPI is using the OCR process to shine a light on discrimination occurring under the cloak of supposedly neutral insurance plan benefit design. When an insurer requires chronically ill patients to pay a disproportionate share of the cost of medication it violates federal law. These are landmark Complaints that will benefit everyone looking to receive equitable, comprehensive health care through the Marketplaces by helping to define anti-discrimination law at a time when insurers are covering less and less.”

Read the press release on the complaints and related advocacy campaign.
Learn what people are saying on facebook and twitter about the complaints.